


i just wanna get groceries (i pray you wanna get close to me)

by taggedasbi



Category: The Prom - Sklar/Beguelin/Martin
Genre: AU, F/F, Fluff, and gay ensues, emma and alyssa meet during the covid19 pandemic, in a supermarket, this may be the corniest fic in the damn tag, we all deal with this is different ways and i guess this is mine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-03
Updated: 2020-04-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:07:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23459863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taggedasbi/pseuds/taggedasbi
Summary: Emma felt like she had drawn a particularly bad lot in life when dealing with the virus pandemic. It wasn’t that she had been diagnosed or anything. In fact, no one in Edgewater had come back with a positive test. Apart from those that are sick, Emma thought, she had it pretty rough.Emma was a checkout chick at the Edgewater supermarket.And during a pandemic where every idiot in Indiana is panic-buying random items, Emma was an extra stressed checkout chick.
Relationships: Alyssa Greene/Emma Nolan
Comments: 4
Kudos: 63





	i just wanna get groceries (i pray you wanna get close to me)

**Author's Note:**

> The idea came from the title song (Groceries, by Mallrat) but I claim full responsibility for this corny covid mess.

Emma felt like she had drawn a particularly bad lot in life when dealing with the virus pandemic. It wasn’t that she had been diagnosed or anything. In fact, no one in Edgewater had come back with a positive test. Apart from those that are sick, Emma thought, she had it pretty rough.

Emma was a checkout chick at the Edgewater supermarket. 

And during a pandemic where every idiot in Indiana is panic-buying random items, Emma was an extra stressed checkout chick. 

She had been working nearly every day, either stocking the shelves or attending the registers with the other twenty-somethings that hated their job. She really didn’t know which she preferred, seeing as she was dealing with half-crazed customers no matter where she was stationed. 

Emma was in the middle of dissociating when a middle-aged lady interrupted her, trying to bribe her for a packet of out-of-stock 3ply. Sucking in a breath and hoping for the best, Emma tried to explain that it was never going to happen.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, I can’t do that. We are out of our entire toilet paper range at the moment. The store will be restocked overnight, so your best chance is to try again in the morning. I’m sorry for the inconvenience.”

Thankfully, the woman stormed off instead of yelling at her, which is what most people had taken to in the past few weeks. Emma puffed out her cheeks and went back to the monotonous task of stocking the canned beans on the bare shelves. 

Before she could drift too far away with her thoughts, another customer brought her back to her bleak reality.

Which suddenly didn’t seem so bleak, all of a sudden.

“Excuse me, I was wondering if you could help me?”

A girl with a mess of curly hair, a tentative smile, and looked to be about the same age met her eyes - though she seemed painfully far away while observing the distance of state-mandated social distancing. 

Emma knew in that moment that if this woman asked her for 3ply, she would risk her job to steal from the stockrooms for her. 

“Uh, sure. What do you need?”

Emma silently cursed her lack of charisma.  _ What do you need?  _ That’s the best she could come up with?

The customer, amazingly, only seemed to smile more. 

“My mother needs some taco shells, and I can’t seem to find any. Do you know which aisle I should be looking in?”

“They’re about halfway down aisle 8, over that way.”

Emma indicated the direction with her thumb, suddenly feeling like she was more capable of handling abusive customers than really pretty ones.

“Thanks, I appreciate it.” The customer made her way past Emma and towards the end of the aisle. 

She wasn’t quite sure why she did it, but she called after her. 

“Hey, uh, miss? Those taco shells are pretty hard to find, I could point them out to you if you’d like?”

The woman tilted her head back to Emma, a slow smile spreading across her face while she nodded. 

Emma nervously caught up to the customer, making sure to keep that excruciating distance between them while she headed towards aisle 8. Their short walk was wordless, but Emma felt exhilarated by it. She had abandoned her stocking cart, which was probably being viciously consumed by panicked soccer moms at that very moment. She was ignoring her actual job in favour of showing a pretty girl where the Mexican goods were. 

And good God, it was the best part of her day.

The only thing that would have made it better is if the taco supplies were actually hard to find, rather than taking up a majority of the aisle’s shelves. It made it glaringly obvious that Emma had lied about their elusiveness, and maybe that she was the gayest mess in the whole of Indiana. 

Fuck, she hoped just the first thing was obvious.

Emma awkwardly gestured to the stupid amount of taco shells in front of them both, and her flight instinct kicked in. 

“There you go, I’ll, uh, leave you to it then.”

Keeping her head low and her steps quick, Emma rushed back to her cart of cans with her heart in her throat. 

- - -

The next day (Saturday, Emma guessed. Who really knows, at this point) Emma was stationed on one of the few registers that wasn’t self serve. She mostly served the elderly customers from the local retirement village that had never learned how to use the self serve machines, but the line of customers was fairly consistent throughout her shift. Emma was so used to serving elderly customers that she barely looked up as the next set of items approached her on the conveyor belt.

“Good afternoon, ma’am, how are yo-”

Her greeting caught in her throat as she found herself looking at the pretty customer from yesterday. Whom she had just called  _ ma’am. _

Fuck.

The woman grinned with a notion of familiarity which made Emma’s heart beat pitifully quick. 

“Hello again. I think you claim the title of the First Person to Call Me Ma’am.” 

Emma’s blush betrayed her again, so she focused her eyes on scanning the customer’s items with great care. Emma hated that she slowed down her scanning speed slightly just to keep this woman in front of her for a little longer.

“I’m sorry about that, I guess I’m not used to serving younger customers on the registers?”

The audible ‘hmmph!’ from the greying woman next in line didn’t seem to bother the beautiful customer that had so quickly commandeered Emma’s heart. In fact, she laughed a little at Emma’s admission. The sound washed away the beeping of the scanners and the cries from shoppers in the empty toilet paper aisle and left Emma with a warm feeling in her chest. 

“I didn’t get a chance to thank you for helping me yesterday. So when my mother asked me to grab a few things today, I was hoping to bump into you again.” Emma’s breath caught as the customer’s eyes flicked down from holding her gaze. “So, thank you, Emma.”

In the moment before Emma remembered she was wearing her nametag, her heartbeat stammered at the familiarity this customer treated her with. She was searching for something witty to say, but didn’t manage to work out anything better than -

“That’ll be $18.60.”

If Emma hadn’t already been blushing, her own un-cool-ness would have instantly reacted to her words. Goddamn she needed to work on her game.

The customer’s smile seemed to falter, but it was back to beaming so fast that Emma doubted that it even changed. She paid, waved off the offer of a receipt, and collected her items.

“Thanks again, Emma. I’ll see you around.”

And with that, she was gone. Emma stared after her long enough to earn the wrath of her next impatient and definitely-not-as-drop-dead-gorgeous customer.

- - -

The next day (Sunday? Muesday? Who gives a fuck) Emma was stocking the shelves again. There was no sign of her new favourite customer.

Emma tried so hard not to feel disappointed. 

- - -

Another shift came along, and Emma wound up back on the registers with a stream of elderly shoppers taking her mind off of a fresh bout of disappointment at the woman’s absence from the store. The more Emma told herself that no one is going to the stores everyday (except lunatic soccer moms with a toilet paper fetish), and that her lack of smooth-talking hadn’t scared off the customer she still didn’t know the name of, the more Emma felt as though she would never see her again. The next time Emma glanced up from her register, she saw something she had definitely hoped for but most certainly was not expecting.

The customer that had occupied a great many of Emma’s thoughts over the past few days walked determinedly into the supermarket, glanced down a few aisles, then locked eyes with Emma at the register. The woman immediately stood in Emma’s line without any items to buy.

Emma gulped and rushed through serving the three customers in front of the woman, worrying that she had somehow upset this person who had only been nice to her. 

When she reached the conveyor belt, the woman grabbed blindly at the register shelf and, with force, placed a packet of chewing gum in front of Emma. Blinking with surprise and gay panic, Emma reached wordlessly for the chewing gum to scan it. The customer’s dark eyes fixed her with a determined look, and Emma tried desperately to tear her eyes away. 

“Emma, I need to say something. I know this is quite possibly the worst time and the worst way to do this, but I have to. I didn’t think I would find someone as pretty as you stocking the canned beans, but I did. When you gave up your time to help me I knew that you weren’t just pretty, but you are also, like, super nice. And so I begged my mom to let me do her grocery shopping the next day just to see you again. And yesterday, I spent most of my day trying to find you on Facebook like a crazy-person. So, to get to my point, I wanted to know if you’d like to go out with me. On a date. After the pandemic.”

Emma, completely speechless, said nothing. 

“God, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to - shit.”

The woman tried to hurry out of the supermarket, leaving the chewing gum behind. Emma’s brain caught up just in time to call out to her.

“Hey, miss?”

The woman stopped in her tracks, turning around to Emma with a strained look in her eyes.

“Yeah?”

“Um, that’s uh. Yes. I’d really like that.”

The woman looked as startled and surprised as Emma felt. 

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Cool.”

“Uh, what’s your name?”

“Alyssa. Alyssa Greene.”

“Cool. I’ll, uh, find you on Facebook.”

“Cool.” 

And with that, Alyssa turned and left the supermarket as quickly as she came in. 

It took Emma a moment to recover, realising that the scowling elderly man that had queued behind Alyssa was, well, scowling at her. 

She had just publicly announced her intentions to go on a date with a woman in Edgewater, Indiana, and Emma had never felt so fucking good.

- - -

When Emma’s shift ended, she opened her Facebook app. A friend request from Alyssa was already waiting for her. 

**Author's Note:**

> hope you enjoyed this crazy return to fic writing for me! stay safe and flatten the curve y'all


End file.
